Let’s talk about coping skills: Old & New....

I’m not talking everyday coping skills, like how to breathe deeply and count to ten when you have road rage. I’m talking about what the hell to do when you get dumped, get fired, cheated on, or some other humiliating event happens.

How do you move forward?

I had my protocol for coping whenever any of the above events happened [and they all have]. I knew what I needed to do in order to move on, and how to numb the pain until it went away on its own. But sometimes I get tired of being unhealthy and over exaggerated with my emotions; the charm has finally worn off.

Now I’m working on new habits to balance out the old ones. I still find myself going back to my tried and true negative coping skills… hey old habits die hard.

At least I’m making an effort to try new things before I bury my feelings in their usual deep and cozy place. So here is an inventory of those new things, as well as a few classic coping skills. Enjoy, and feel free to share yours!

Old coping skill: shameless flirtation

Just watch me any night I go out to the bar and have a few drinks. It’s a shameless way to feed my ego. There’s nothing more fun than being the most charming gal at the bar.

People don’t scare me. All those years of working with homeless guys who have severe mental illness made me an expert at talking to anyone.

You point out the craziest looking person in the room and tell me to talk to them. Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll have them laughing and telling me their life story. I might charge you a few drinks first.

Old Coping Skill: Beer

Goes well with the shameless flirtation mentioned before, as well as “numbing the pain.”

New Coping Skill:
Vernors: The Original Ginger Soda

A Michigan original since 1866, barrel aged bold taste.
Drinking beer is a huge coping tradition in Michigan. However, stocking up on PBRs and falling asleep by 8pm every night can only go on for so long.

Now I am substituting another Michigan tradition, Vernors. Vernors ginger ale was created in Detroit and became the first soda pop made in the United States. When you drink it, it matches the refreshing feeling of a beer.

This is no Canada Dry or Schweppes ginger ale, which is sweet and mild and boring if using it as a beer substitute. Vernors is bold and powerful and utterly satisfying; for those with sophisticated tastes.

Vernor’s is a longtime comfort for me. There’s a cult following in Michigan, and lucky for me 2 nearby Safeways import Vernors. And I usually bring a few 12packs back to Colorado when returning from a trip to Michigan.

New Coping Skill: Craft Night

Every week I have a night dedicated to friends, food, and craftiness.

My friend Sandi crochets breakup blankets. When she’s going through a breakup, her productivity quadruples and she can make a giant blanket in about 4 days.

I knit scarves. Knitting is therapeutic for me.

Just like Sandi, the number of scarves I am able to produce is directly related to my emotional state. Just before Christmas I knitted a blanket.

My next project is to knit scarves for most of Denver’s transient population.
That size of a project should cure me, right?

New coping skill:
Creating breakup song mixed CDs with my friend, Sherry.

After Sherry and I realized we shared the same taste in bands from our youth, we decided to create a mix CD with old breakup songs. They got a lot of things right in the 80's....

Poison: Every Rose Has its Thorn

Ozzy Ozbourne: Mama I’m Coming Home

Whitesnake: Here I go again (on my own)

Journey: Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)

Guns N Roses: November Rain

Journey: Wheel in The Sky

Pat Benatar: Love is a Battlefield

Van Halen: Why Can’t This Be Love

Eddie Money: I’ll Get By

Heart: Who Will You Run To?

Old Coping Skill:
Moving to the next relationship too quickly, post-breakup.

What better way to prove my worthiness than to have a new person in my life, with new lust and hot sex?

Who cares if they are really young or slightly crazy?

Being single takes so much patience.

New Coping Skill:
Applying to Grad School on a whim

It’s great to brag about all that you’ve accomplished with your newfound free time, now that you’re single/rejected/unemployed/etc...

Also, studying for the GRE is far more painful than any breakup I’ve been through.

I shed a lot of tears over that damn test.

New coping skill:
Pen Pals with Harold.

I write regularly to my grandpa and grandma, but also to my friend Harold, a nice older man who lives in Spring Lake, Michigan.

Harold drives around my hometown and sends me photos that he takes from the driver’s seat of his car. Pictures of the lake from the top of 5 mile hill, the new courthouse under construction, the local Meijer grocery store, and the lighthouses.

I LOVE getting these letters, Harold is amazing.

Old Coping Skill:
Seeking Validation from Exes.

Examples include:

1. Emailing an ex out of nowhere, just a few lines to say “hello gorgeous, what’s up?” But your ex knows you too well, and can tell that is the most loaded simple email ever. Soon its co-dependent coping about breakups and single life, laced with sexual tension and bad memories.

2. Drunk texting an ex. Because you’re drunk and it’s a Thursday night, and you’re not getting the results you want from all the shameless flirtation.

3. Finding them on the social networking websites to see if they are single and just as miserable as you. And if they are happily in a relationship you vow to never talk to them again. They were crazy anyways.

New Coping Skill:
Being Nice to Exes when they contact me.

And by this I mean the exes I don’t voluntarily seek out.

Exhibit A: Anonymous Ex from 2007 emailed me this week, after no contact for over one year.
Exhibit B: Anonymous Ex from 2008 emailed me two weeks ago, after no contact for at least ten months.

I took an offensive strategy, for once.

I emailed Ex 2008 back within a few days, just saying hi and that I hope all is well, and I’m doing ok. Loved hearing from you, so glad to hear you are successful these days!

That was 2 weeks ago, and so far no email back.
Score.

I emailed Ex 2007 back within a day, and was really upbeat and nice.

Ex emailed me again, also very positive, no typical crazy ranting.

I emailed Ex, and mentioned that I would be in Atlanta this summer (where Ex now lives), and that we should grab a beer together when I’m there.

Ex emails back, saying that we probably shouldn't hang out. Don't want to make New GF (from cheating affair while dating me) jealous, ya know.

Double Score!

Amazing, just being nice and available makes them totally lose interest and leave me alone.

Old Coping Skill: Online voyeurism.

Preferred sites: Either Myspace, Facebook, or Match.com.
You can find people you used to know, and ones you’d like to meet.

Both encourage vanity and the endless search for the perfect self portrait with my digital camera; an enticing “profile” picture that is at once sexy and mysterious, but with an air of indifference.

Or a profile photo that shows you having much fun with some handsome European nuzzling your ear.

New Coping Skill: NPR’s website.

In particular: the NPR Online Community and old podcasts worth hours of entertainment.

NPR is harmless fun, because the hottest person on the NPR Community is Carl Kassell. Zero opportunity for online flirting, which is a confusing and bazaar experience anyways.
Instead, I discover new music samples, stay current on depressing war stories, and memorize strange headlines from quiz shows.

The difficult part is that there are an endless number of podcasts which makes me feel like I am watching a 3 day marathon of “The Biggest Loser”, and thus wasting my life away in the most mind-numbing way possible.

New coping skill:
Posting witty remarks on blogs of people I would love to meet.

Exhibit A:
Posting on the NPR blog of Sleater-Kinney guitarist, Carrie Brownstein.

[The blog was: “I can’t hear you”…or…Have you ever used music as a weapon?]
Jesse Y wrote:
I am guilty of using music as a weapon...
Especially with an ex!
L7: The Beauty Process
The first 58 seconds of this CD features Donita Sparks SCREAMING into the mic.
Perfect to play on repeat at 7am, the morning after you find out your live-in partner brought someone else home the night before.

Old Coping Skill:
Astrological Predictions of my future

My mother is to blame for this one.
She has been forecasting my life via horoscopes since I was 6 years old. Yes, our hometown newspaper horoscope section was my mother’s spiritual guide.
That sentence explains a lot about my life.

There’s nothing more depressing than looking to the Grand Haven Tribune local horoscope column, or going to my favorite astrological websites, only to find they have nothing to say regarding my current crisis.

Some horoscopes only fuel my insecurity about money, love, my job, and anything else they throw in there. Then it’s another excruciating week of waiting, to see if they get a little closer to the mark next time.

New Coping Skill: New Age shit

All those years of living in Boulder have finally caught up with me. I might just be a believer.
Why?

Those buddist/zen self-help gurus stop my brain from deconstructing everything that comes my way.

Their books tell you to shut the hell up and just be ok with everything. Don’t think, don’t react, just be, but lose yourself, and don’t have an ego, don’t identify with success or looks, and don’t complain, and think only positive thoughts about people who complain and have big egos.

It’s all so simple that it has to make sense. We’re going back to the day of puritanical asceticism, denial of self and denial of indulgence. Only it’s older than that, because they claim it’s the original way we were.

Essentially, stop letting your emotions rule you and your actions. And, as a bonus, you control pretty much everything. Perfect for someone with heightened anxiety and control issues.
They say practice yoga, mindfulness, meditation, awareness…

It all comes back to this:
Stop thinking and dwelling and being an emotional crazy wreck.
And sometimes I am. But I’m learning that I don’t always have to be.